Lofty offices, erect like easels. Paintings chosen to color the wall that seem abstract and hollow of meaning. A man in his underwear facing a set of scales, dead. His blood ruins the beige monotony of the Berber carpet.
(Captain) Eli Gould was found murdered this morning. Someone broke into his law firm and bled him to death. Wrote the word greed on the floor, in blood.

(Somerset) A guy's out walking his dog, gets attacked. His watch is taken, his wallet. While he's lying on the sidewalk, helpless, his attacker stabs him in both eyes. Now this happened just last night, about four blocks from here.

(Somerset, to the security gaurds at the library) Gentlemen, I'll never understand it. All these books, a world of knowledge at your fingertips, and what do you do? You play poker all night.

Wednesday

One pound of flesh
no more, no less
No cartilage, no bone
but only flesh
This task done, he would go free
Merchant of Venice.

(Mills) I'm telling you, that chair was soaked through with sweat. (Somerset) Imagine it. There's a gun pointed in your face. What part of your body is expendable? He's preaching to us. (Mills) He's punishing.

(Somerset) These murders are like forced attrition. Attrition is when you regret your sins but not because you love God. In any city, minding your own business is a science. The first thing they teach women in rape prevention is, never cry for help. Always yell fire. No one answers to help. You yell fire, they come running.

(Gould's wife) Wait. Here. This painting, it's upside down.
(Mills) What exactly is it that we are doing?
(Somerset) Picking up diamonds on a deserted island, saving them, in case we get rescued.

What is it that greed does to us? Does is slant the truth when your goal is to defend a man who doesn't deserve to go free? Since most of us are not lawyers, how else would greed slant us? Is is when something is put in front of all the other things in life that are supposed to matter the most? When you want more than you share as it is comparable to the rest of the world, where does the chain reaction stop?